Mathematician Eugenia Cheng: ‘Yes, I am an anarchist’ | Hacker News Reader

Mathematician Eugenia Cheng: ‘Yes, I am an anarchist’

theguardian.com

9 pointsbtat116 comments

Honestly, the article offers nothing of substance. It's a light piece designed to spread awareness about Cheng's upcoming book. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

> "There’s only been one female winner of the Fields medal since it was first awarded in 1936 – Maryam Mirzakhani. Does maths suffer from an old boys’ club mentality?"

> "I am happy to say I have not experienced that."

You can clearly see the invisible hand of the Guardian trying to spin the narrative, hoping to score identity points out of the interview. Thankfully, she answers in a concise, drama-free manner. Still, the title they chose has nil to do with the piece.

Catchy title, nothing more. On Cheng's part it was simply a joke about the mathematician's mind being similar to the mind of an anarchist. In fact, mathematics and anarchism do have something in common. It is being based on strict laws of logic. Anarchism is no joke! Problem is, while mathematics is extremely successful, anarchism will never succeed in achieving its goals. Its criticism of the modern technological society is based on what looks like a correct analysis of the effects it has on an individual and his freedoms. Again, problem is, for better or worse, the technological and scientific progress is irreversible, and there is nothing anarchists or anybody else can do about it.

As an anarchist myself, how I wish the article lived up to its title. Interesting nevertheless.

Advocates of anarchy are invariably those least-equipped to survive it.

Anarchy does not mean "anything goes", it is the rejection of the class system and systems of unjustified authority and people being free to make voluntary associations with the abolition of money, private property and implementation of direct democracy in those voluntary institutions.

I'm not quite sure what you want to get at.

If people are forced not to be able to use money, I don't see how that's free.

The reality is that most of the things Anarchists want to abolish, the vast majority of people of their own free will actually want to keep.

>If people are forced not to be able to use money, I don't see how that's free.

This along with other things are oft-repeated myths about Communism. The goal is to eliminate money by eliminating the need that creates it: that is, wage labour and artificial scarcity. You are free to use money. You are not free to exploit people. That is to say, you would not be allowed to profit by the work of others by collecting their surplus value. It is equivalent to stealing (unless both parties give informed consent).

However there would be no need for anyone to engage in wage labour, because people would no lonver be forced to work for their survival.

It's a shame Marx never explained how those needs would actually be met.

If I'm correct, Marx always viewed his task as one to criticise the capitalist system and analyse it in terms of the history leading up to it, rather than define how a Communistic society ought to be implemented. Marx is quoted as having said that Communism is an ideal to strive toward rather than one to be implemented directly per se.

Fewer people would have to work under a post-capitalist mode of production. I don't know how it's decided who works, but generally those with the appropriate skill would share labour amongst themselves, and people would be trained in the education system to do the jobs required by society. Again, the number of these jobs will be relatively small due to massive automation, which will occur at an increasing pace compared to the current capitalist system (in which too much automation means less profit, because goods are bought back using wages).

Out of curiosity, how many anarchists do you know, and how well would you say you know them?

Ditto. There are more anarchists (of various stripes) in the tech community than it would at first appear.

what is the point of this headline, other than to decieve? it is not the headline of the article and is not a quote from the text in the article

edit: I hope I'm not just being a killjoy here - I actually thought this was going to be some kind of political article.

You're not the only one. I was half hoping for some discussion of how mathematical theory illuminates, say, the writings of Bakunin or Goldman.

Cheng's definition of anarchism is "not having rules imposed on you". I'm afraid this article leftist-triggered me.

The titles of her books are so childish. That's her prerogative, but it feels like a real "Two Cultures" situation: I wish Cheng or someone else would span recreational/popular math and serious culture where the world is not considered as a hilarious two-dimensional cardboard cut-out or slapstick prop.

You (and I) are not in the target audience for those books. She does very serious mathematics, which should be defended; she gave a very nice talk on Trimble n-categories to my research group on Friday, for instance.

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